In recent years, as virtually every aspect of school life has become the object of reform, various organizations have focused on teacher professional development and have sought to identify qualities that characterize effective practice in the field. These standards vary in their particulars, but generally they strike common themes. They call for programs that focus intensely on student learning; deepen teachers' understanding of their subjects; improve instructional techniques; provide adequate time and resources for sustained, rigorous study; bring teachers together in learning communities; embody the principles of adult education; and constitute a routine part of a teacher's professional life.

The National Staff Development Council (NSDC) has put forth what is generally recognized as one of the most comprehensive and judicious sets of professional development standards available today. In fact, many states have modeled their own standards on the Council's. They describe twelve benchmarks, ranging from the need to promote learning communities to the importance of involving outside stakeholders in the schools. On its website the Council states each standard, explains its rationale, and supports it with an annotated bibliography citing the research upon which the standard is based. The National Humanities Center's Teacher Professional Development Program does not address every aspect of every standard. No program could. However, as the following analysis indicates, it does encompass significant elements in each. (To access the Council's standards, please visit http://www.nsdc.org/standards/about/index.cfm.)

Standard 1. Learning Communities

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students organizes adults into learning communities whose goals are aligned with those of the school and district."

     The Council defines a learning community as an "ongoing team that meets on a regular basis . . . for the purpose of learning, joint lesson planning, and problem solving." Learning communities can take a variety of forms and serve many purposes, including subject-matter study. The National Humanities Center's model establishes learning communities for precisely that purpose. At its heart are seminars, based on material drawn from the Center's online seminar toolboxes, that bring pre-collegiate teachers and higher education faculty together to study subject matter and consider ways to teach it. Since their content is based on curriculum standards, the seminars explicitly align with the knowledge goals of schools and districts. In this way the seminars benefit institutions, but they benefit individuals as well, for they offer teachers intellectual stimulation and renewal plus an enhanced sense of professional self-esteem.

Standard 2. Leadership

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students requires skillful school and district leaders who guide continuous instructional improvement."

     This standard largely addresses the responsibility of school and district leaders to support professional development by articulating the link between it and student performance and by establishing policies and organizational structures that promote continuous improvement. It also calls upon leaders to make sure that their colleagues have "the necessary knowledge and skills" to create sound professional development programs. Through its training component, the Center's program offers local professional development designers a way to acquire the knowledge and hone the skills required to organize collaborative content-based seminars. Through ongoing consultation, the program supports efforts for continuous improvement. Moreover, the seminars themselves promote leadership skills among teachers because the process of seminar building requires them to identify, articulate, and act upon curricular needs.

Standard 3. Resources

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students requires resources to support adult learning and collaboration."

     Effective professional development requires resources—funds to send teachers to workshops and conferences; hire trainers, facilitators, and substitute teachers; and pay stipends. The Council argues that such expenditures should be viewed as investments "that will pay future dividends," rather than as burdens that deplete already small budgets. The professional development seminars engendered by the Center's Program usually require funds to cover teacher stipends, faculty honoraria, and food. However, the model is sufficiently flexible so that a sponsor can customize a seminar to fit a budget. Through its ongoing consultation the Center can also provide fund-raising advice.

Standard 4. Data-driven

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students uses disaggregated student data to determine adult learning priorities, monitor progress, and help sustain continuous improvement."

     Data from "standardized tests, district-made tests, student work samples, portfolios, and other sources provide important input into the selection of school or district improvement goals and provide focus for staff development efforts," writes the Council. "This process of data analysis and goal development typically determines the content of teachers' professional learning . . . ." The Center's model requires that teachers reflect upon their own work to isolate weaknesses in lesson and unit plans and upon the work of their students to identify concepts or texts students find especially challenging. They then design a seminar to address those needs. The Council also notes that classroom data should shape the assessment of professional development programs, and here, too, the Center's model is right on target. Follow-up evaluation sessions focus on the ways students respond to curricular and instructional changes made as a result of a seminar. These discussions not only lead to summative conclusions about a past seminar but also shape formative recommendations for future programs.

Standard 5. Evaluation

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students uses multiple sources of information to guide improvement and demonstrate its impact."

     Evaluation, as the Council points out, serves many purposes and many audiences. It can tell a planner how well a particular program worked, or it can show skeptical legislators how productive their investment in teacher training has been. In any event, if professional development is to be taken seriously, evaluation can no longer begin and end with the quick, before-you-dash-to-your-car questionnaire that measures only the participants' immediate responses to a program. It must be integrated into a program from the earliest planning stages through follow up and must assess how a program affects teachers' acquisition of new knowledge and skills and how that learning affects teaching and student performance. The Center's model offers a four-step evaluation process that begins with seminar planning, as it asks teachers to reflect upon their own work and what they hope to get out of a seminar, and continues through follow up, as it gives teachers an opportunity to assess the difference the seminar made in their classrooms. The Center's process is designed to serve primarily the needs of program organizers and those of teachers, but it can be adapted to serve the needs of more distant constituencies as well.

Standard 6. Research-based

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students prepares educators to apply research to decision making."

     To avoid falling for the "fad du jour," the Council advises teachers and administrators to "become informed consumers of educational research when selecting both the content and . . . learning process" of professional development programs. The key word in the Council's admonition is "informed," and to that one might add "cautious." Educational research varies widely in its rigor and validity. Moreover, it is a contentious field in which conflicting critiques often breed confusion. The National Humanities Center has attempted to build a sound research base for its professional development model by having it assessed by independent evaluators through every step of its evolution. It has also built into the model a process for continuous assessment that will monitor the effectiveness of the program as it continues to evolve. The Center will gladly share this data with teachers and administrators interested in introducing the model into their schools and districts.

Standard 7. Designs and Strategies

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students uses learning strategies appropriate to the intended goal."

     The Council urges administrators and planners to realize that professional development can take many forms other than traditional courses, workshops, or group presentations. A program's intended outcomes should determine its format. Thus, according to the Council, the goal of implementing a standards-based curriculum might appropriately be advanced by a program built upon the "study of subject with a content expert." The Center's model seeks to implement standards-based curricula by deepening the knowledge of American history and literature teachers in the content of their local standards. To achieve this end, the model employs precisely the approach the Council cites, subject study under content experts. In developing seminars, teachers collaborate with historians and literary scholars, who then, typically, lead the resulting program. While the collaborative seminar model is appropriate to its intellectual goal, it is also right for its pedagogic goal. Having teachers design and participate in a professional development seminar shows them how to design and lead a classroom seminar.

Standard 8. Learning

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students applies knowledge about human learning and change."

     In this standard the Council argues that professional development should "promote deep understanding of a topic and provide many opportunities for teachers . . . to practice new skills" while receiving critical feedback on their performance. The Center's model seeks to promote deep understanding of American history and literature by making it easy and convenient for teachers to read and discuss primary texts in content-based seminars under the guidance of scholars. Through its training and consultation components, the Center's program seeks to establish such seminars in a school or district, not as one-time special events, but rather as routine offerings in a professional development repertoire. In so doing, the program enables a school or district to offer teachers the repeated learning opportunities that are essential if professional development is to result in deep understandings and improved instruction.

Standard 9. Collaboration skills

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students provides educators with the knowledge and skills to collaborate."

     In schools today—among teachers, students, and administrators—much of the work of education is group work. Indeed, as the Council points out, many of the recommendations contained in its own standards depend upon educators coming together to address the challenges of teaching and learning. Yet the development of collaborative skills "has not typically been part of educators' professional preparation." Thus the Council argues that "professional learning be directed to improving the quality of collaborative work." "It is essential," the Council writes, "that professional learning focused on helping educators work together successfully be given a high priority." Professional development should provide teachers "appropriate knowledge and skills" in group processes to guarantee that such work is effective and rewarding. The Center's model enables teachers to develop and practice collaborative skills. First, they join forces with each other and with consulting scholars to customize a course of study. Then, in collective discussion sessions, they explore the texts they chose. Finally, in small-groups, they devise ways to bring the seminar texts and concepts into their classes. The premium the Center places upon group collaboration squarely addresses this standard.

Standard 10. Equity

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students prepares educators to understand and appreciate all students, create safe, orderly, and supportive learning environments, and hold high expectations for their academic achievement."

     According to this standard, professional development should not only help teachers understand the cognitive, social, and emotional characteristics of students but also enable them to fashion instructional strategies that tap into each child's unique learning strengths. This standard also calls for professional development that shows teachers how to build high academic expectations into their classes. The Center's model most directly addresses this latter element. Its seminars are built upon challenging texts, higher order analytical skills, and intellectual exchange. By explicitly focusing on ways to transfer texts, concepts, skills, and discussion techniques from a seminar to the classroom, the model encourages teachers to raise the intellectual bar of their instruction and present their students with more demanding work. A seminar asks a great deal of teachers and in so doing models how they in turn can ask much of their students.

Standard 11. Quality teaching

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students deepens educators' content knowledge, provides them with research-based instructional strategies to assist students in meeting rigorous academic standards, and prepares them to use various types of classroom assessments appropriately."

     Of all of the Council's standards, the Center's model addresses this one most thoroughly. "Successful teachers have a deep understanding of the subjects they teach, use appropriate instructional methods, and apply various classroom assessment strategies." They participate in "sustained, intellectually rigorous professional learning" that focuses on these areas and that, when possible, gives them firsthand experience as learners in the instructional approaches "they will in turn be using with their own students." The Center's model embodies all of these elements. Through readings and discussions guided by scholars it deepens understandings in American history and literature. It promotes intellectual exchange and the critical analysis of texts, traditionally considered the most effective ways to teach humanistic disciplines. While the model does not offer training in assessment, it does focus attention on it as seminar participants consider how to bring seminar texts and concepts into their classes. Finally, it casts teachers as "students," immersing them in a seminar experience and thereby giving them the learner's perspective on the instructional method the program seeks to promote in the classroom.

Standard 12. Family involvement

"Staff development that improves the learning of all students provides educators with knowledge and skills to involve families and other stakeholders appropriately."

     Although this standard focuses chiefly on forging bonds between the home and the school, it does address broader relations. Educators, the Council asserts, "must be knowledgeable about various ways in which families and community members can be involved meaningfully in the affairs of the school for the benefit of students." The Center's model provides professional development planners a highly effective way to bring scholars in the arts and sciences into the lives of teachers, and those scholars can prove to be especially useful allies. Typically, when K-12 educators form partnerships with colleges or universities, they collaborate with departments or schools of education. As valuable as such arrangements can be, they call upon only a fraction of a college's or university's resources. Rarely are sustained partnerships formed with arts and science departments. The Center's model offers schools and districts a way to enrich their professional development repertoires with the expertise of scholars in history and literature. Scholars who have led toolbox seminars have found the experience rewarding and enjoyable. Many have led more than one or have become allies within their departments, helping to recruit their colleagues to lead other seminars. The training the Center provides as part of its Teacher Professional Development Program shows planners how to recruit scholars and work with them for the benefit of students.